Lego Dimensions is the ultimate Lego game, a charming adventure that has glaring flaws. Its portal is a delight, but the reminders of the areas you’re missing out on grate.

Despite leaning a little too heavily on fan-servicing familiarity, Payday 3 proves there's still fun to be squeezed from its well-honed heisting template yet.

Pumping out the necessary number of piñatas to earn Master Romancer and other serious rewards should keep even the most experienced gamers busy and sedated for a good week.

There are even occasional (very minor) glitches that'll have you scratching your batting helmet. But it is good for a laugh if you've got 20 minutes on your hands. If you're a number-crunching statistician, you'll be annoyed by the 27 hits per side, per game.

Unquestionably, Section 8 is a rock-solid multiplayer game that deserves to find a strong audience. But it certainly has its faults. The underwhelming campaign, über-generic setting, mediocre graphics, and occasional frame rate loss plague this otherwise excellent experience.

For the few, the proud and the masochistic, however, your game has arrived. Good luck, and for the love of god, use that optional wrist-strap. PSPs are expensive.

Ambition may have outstripped ability, but there's no doubt that fans of the series will find much to love about this entry, flawed as any of the rest of them. That's the best we could have hoped for.

While it doesn't feel as vital as Battlefields past, inventive new multiplayer modes and a fresh, if slightly unfocused campaign make Hardline the worthy TV spin-off to DICE’s big budget blockbusters.

This is Bayonetta dressed up in robot clothes, which is a Very Good Thing. Brilliantly playable, and full of Transformers fan-service, only its brevity and simplistic level design let it down.

Clash of Ninja Revolution 3 is a different yet enjoyable fighting game. Your friends might hassle you, but it’s their loss.

Parents will appreciate that the action is as non-violent as combat can get - enemy pilots always eject just in time - and everyone else that isn't overly concerned with looking childish will enjoy exploring Snoopy's colorful imagination and shooting down buddies in what may be the biggest surprise good time of the year.

The high-def graphics feel like overkill, and the addition of Fooms - cutesy animations to "send" emotional outbursts to other players - don't make sense when you can chat freely with other players. At the end of the day, it's cards; no more, no less.

Unfortunately, the additions to NSMB2 merely add more spokes to an already heavy wheel, so to speak. It's not a bad game by any means, but it's one that steeps itself in nostalgia to mask an experience that falls short of the revival that the New Super Mario franchise really needs these days.

In short, CGS is a lot like its own hero, Killian - stuck in second place between mediocrity and exceptional.

Dying Light 2 offers a great open world playground for zombie survival, but lacks an impactful story or meaningful choices.

Muscle March is a lot of fun simply because it’s just so damn strange. It’s definitely worth a download, even if you only pull it to make your friends’ jaws hit the floor from time-to-time.

The gameplay is nothing outstanding, but it's fun enough while it lasts, and overall it looks pretty slick.

So the game play isn't new or innovative - in fact fans of the series will find it to be a little too similar to the first two to be truly 'new.' But the one liners - the one liners almost make up for it. At one point we were laughing so hard we missed the police shooting at us and died, having to 'start over.'

South of Midnight is a charming (if predictable) action-adventure experience that's perfectly happy to play it safe. Nods to folklore and the Southern Gothic tradition are well conceptualized through mechanics, lore, and environments, even if areas like narrative order suffer for this stylization. Familiarity soon fades into monotony across nine of its 14 chapters, though it's hard to stay bored when South of Midnight's world is such a smooth and effortless joy to explore. The result is a spellbinding tale that struggles to find its rhythm, but once found, absolutely sings.

If you want some decent online multiplayer action and don't mind being nickeled and dimed for your trouble, CCBO may be worth a look. The mission variety, consistent skill curve, and twitch-based gameplay of the title distinguish it from the hotkey-laden affairs that others offer. However, it simply does not deliver on the long-term appeal or rewards that a great MMO should.

You're left with an enjoyable and highly playable racing game with loads to do and, just occasionally, some of the most exhilarating action in any racing game, ever. If only Codies had ramped up the damage and placed a bit more emphasis on racing events, this would be essential.

A game that takes patience and an appreciation for the more unforgiving elements of platform titles. Dying time and again at the hands of the same trap starts to get old fast. However, there's no denying that the game's puzzles are of the more inventive variety in the platformer genre, and with its quality narrative, Pid's worth getting invested in.

Gran Turismo has lost its mojo and become a dinosaur among modern racing games. It still drives brilliantly, but it's also bloated, scrappy, unbalanced and majorly dull for prolonged periods of play.

But it’s not quite slick enough underneath all those pretty visuals to earn essential status.

State of Decay 2 confidently reaches the series’ potential as the ultimate zombie survival sim, even if it hits a few familiar bumps in the road on the way there.

Don't buy Dead or Alive 4 unless you're willing to become its student. It's a great looker, but it's a sourly aggravating game until you learn its ways. However, if you take the time to get some technique wrapped up in those fists, you'll start to enjoy the depth behind the startlingly pretty face.

There’s a strong element of cooperative play with an excellent twist that will surely be the death of many a friendships, and plenty of character customization to build up your own magic-wielding badass. The game’s got plenty of great content, especially if you can convince a few others to take that step with you, but if you’re holding your breath for a great story, you’re almost certainly going to be disappointed.

Of course, if eye candy, implied promiscuity, and becoming a rock star do happen to be your cup of tea, you'll certainly find Miami Nights much more engaging than the typical social sim.